never too old for a well-told yarn

Archive for the ‘Kids books-general’ Category

The 2015 ALA Youth Media Awards were remarkably diverse. We’ve got the obvious standouts, like The Crossover winning the Newbery medal, and the outpouring of love for graphic novels. In the wake of #WeNeedDiverseBooks and other recent efforts, it’s a welcome change. And that got me thinking about the larger trend of diversity in children’s book awards, which led to an insane exercise where I cataloged the winners of eight kidlit book awards over eleven years.

One thing that became immediately obvious is that this year’s ALA awards bucks the trend. Consider, for instance:

2015 is the first year since 2005 (Kira-Kira) that the Newbery Medal-winning book stars a character of color. Think about that. Two winners in 11 years.

Now compare that with the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature, where 6 of the past 11 winners have starred a protagonist of color (The Thing About Luck; Inside Out and Back Again; Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice; The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian; The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Vol. 1: The Pox Party; Brown Girl Dreaming)

If you consider protagonists from other under-represented groups (disability, LGBT, etc), then the NBA gets one more (Mockingbird), and the Printz Medal has four winners (In Darkness, Ship Breaker, American Born Chinese, I’ll Give You the Sun), but the stats for the Newbery remain unchanged. These “diverse” books (for lack of a better catch-all term) are even rarer as Caldecott Medal winners. There’s just one: Chris Raschka’s The Hello, Goodbye Window from 2006.

I’m a bit behind this year on BoB contenders, but of the 13 I’ve read so far (everything except A Volcano Beneath the Snow, This One Summer, Egg & Spoon), here are the ones I’d love to see as the winner–or at least a top 3/Undead winner.

Brown Girl Dreaming, Children of the King, El Deafo: I’m always keen to see middle grade books triumph, and these three are incredible. Besides, we haven’t had a MG winner since Okay for Now in 2012.

Sequels: they’re everywhere. It seems like half my reading life is consumed by the reading, or consideration of reading, a book that’s part of a series. Sometimes the decision is easy, as I impatiently waited for The Whispering Skull in the wake of TheScreaming Staircase. At other times, I didn’t think a sequel was necessary, but I was glad for the chance to plunge back into a familiar world (The Ghosts of Tupelo Landing).

Then there’s my vague confusion when I’m confronted with a sequel whose prequel is just a distant memory, and I’m torn between reading the sequel and hoping the author reminds me of everything I need to know, or giving up altogether and succumbing to reader’s guilt. Case in point: I enjoyed How to Catch a Bogle, but I honestly can’t recall single character’s name at this point. So do I read the newly-released A Plague of Bogles? Or do I use the time for other books, which, given the proliferation of multi-volume series, will probably open the door to another book whose sequel will come out in another year, thereby setting off the conundrum anew.

Surely I can’t be the only one with this problem? To help ease my indecision, I’ve created a flowchart: may it assuage your sequel confusion and free you from the guilt of giving up on certain books.

Reading Wild Things! Acts of Mischief in Children’s Literature was the perfect way to cap off 2014. Written by children’s book bloggers Betsy Bird, Julie Danielson and Peter D. Sieruta (who passed away shortly before the book was published), it offers an insider’s look at the kidlit world in all its absurdity: scandals! book-banning! in-fighting! In short, it’s about how the adults behind the children’s book industry behave like adults, instead of the angelic, bunny-loving writers that many grown-ups imagine them to be.

“With this book we hope to dispel the romanticized image of children’s literature, held by much of the public, of children’s authors writing dainty, instructive stories with a quill pen in hand and woodland creatures curled up at their feet,” says the Wild Things! authors in chapter one.

Having set the ground rules, Bird et al plunge into the juicy anecdotes: the author who killed her mother with cutlery; the bawdy, sexist book written by the Berenstain Bear series authors; Roald Dahl’s years as a British spy–which involved seducing a congresswoman to influence U.S. foreign policy.

Not all the stories are meant to shock. Some, like the backstory of how Jerry Spinelli got his start in writing, are awkwardly hilarious. Others show missed opportunities–like how an editor’s mistake deprived the world of a Maurice Sendak-illustrated version of J.R. R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. In its best moments, reading Wild Things! is like listening to a master storyteller spin tales about storytelling giants. (more…)

NBC’s Peter Pan Live was certainly filmed live, but whether there was any spark of life to it is debatable. Critics were hoping the production would be one big hate-watch snarkfest in the tradition of last year’s The Sound of Music Live!, and but while NBC’s Peter had its issues, the show wasn’t substantial enough to evoke such strong opinions as much as a general sense of confusion. To borrow a line from the Baker’s Wife from Into the Woods–whose film trailer during the commercial break might have been the high point of the evening for me–what. was. that?

All the actors were perfectly acceptable in their roles, nothing Broadway level (expect, perhaps, Kelli O’Hara as Mrs. Darling; sorry Christian Borle, even though you were amazing as Black ‘Stache in parallel Peter Pan universe), but also nothing to mean-tweet about. Even Christopher Walken, who Christopher Walken-ed his way through every song, dance, and line reading of the three hour broadcast. But when the standouts are Mrs. Darling, Nana the dog, and a creepily psychedelic turquoise man in a crocodile suit, what more is there to say?

Well, we could talk about the generally confusing production, both the source material (which I’d just read recently) and the director’s vision for it. The enduring popularity of J.M. Barrie’s original still baffles me, and I’m not sure why it enchanted audiences in the 1950s as a musical. Was it the flying? Or the fact that it lined up nicely with the gender norms of the time?

For modern day viewers, though, it was just plain weird watching one woman defy gender norms by cross dressing while subjecting another woman to pocket-making and other archaic gender rules. Weirder still to a modern audience is that Wendy–who was written a hundred years ago, mind you–seemed to genuinely enjoy her dual role of mothering and cat-fighting with Tiger Lily. (Was the Victorian era that boring?) (more…)

I found some time to visit a bookstore on a recent trip to Japan, where I saw an old friend:

Google translate informs me none of the words on the cover mean “caterpillar,” so it seems the translation isn’t literal. Anyone know what it says?

I also found two other translations of American picture books, both by Sherri Duskey Rinker, illustrated by Tom Lichtenheld:

Good Night, Good Night, Construction Site

Steam Train, Dream Train

And it should come as no surprise that Japan is in the grip of Frozen-mania:

The bookstore even had an English language section, which seemed very enthusiastic about Halloween, even though it was two months away.

On the non-book front, I was lucky enough to visit the Ghibli Museum, dedicated to the films of Hayao Miyazaki (Spirited Away, Howl’s Moving Castle, My Neighbor Totoro, etc). They wouldn’t let us take pictures inside, but Totoro was on the welcoming committee: